Personality 1

Colman, A. M. (2004). Personality. In A. Kuper and J. Kuper (Eds), The social science encyclopedia (3rd ed., Vol.
2, pp. 716-719). London: Routledge.

personality
Personality (from the Latin persona, an actor’s mask) is an ill-defined concept embracing the entire
constellation of psychological characteristics that differentiate people from one another. There is no
consensus on its precise definition: in 1937 Gordon W. Allport quoted more than fifty distinct definitions,
and the list has grown considerably since then. The underlying assumptions common to all definitions are
that people have more or less stable patterns of behaviour across certain situations, and that these
behaviour patterns differ from one person to the next. Whereas most areas of psychological research are
concerned with universal aspects of behaviour and mental experience, the study of personality focuses
specifically on individual differences.
The earliest personality theory of note, uncertainly attributed to Hippocrates (c. 400 BC) or Galen (AD
c. 170) and widely accepted throughout the Middle Ages, is the doctrine of the four temperaments. People
were classified into four personality types according to the balance of humours or fluids in their bodies.
People were thought to be more or less sanguine (optimistic), melancholic (depressive), choleric (short-
tempered), or phlegmatic (unemotional) according to the balance in their bodies of blood (sanguis), black
bile (melaina chole), yellow bile (chole), and phlegm (phlegma). The physiological basis of this theory
collapsed during the Renaissance with advances in biological knowledge, but the underlying typology
survived in some modern personality theories.
The first systematic investigation of individual differences using modern empirical methods was
Francis Galton’s study of intelligence in England in 1884, based on tests of sensory discrimination that
turned out to be poorly related to general intelligence. The first standardized measure of intelligence,
based on tests of reasoning and scored according to age norms, was developed by the French
psychologists Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon in 1905, and it stimulated research into other kinds of
individual differences. Work on intelligence continued to flourish independently and is still (illogically)
excluded from most academic discussions of personality.
The simplest personality theories focus on single traits or characteristics. Among the most extensively
researched of the single-trait theories are those concerned with authoritarianism, field dependence, and
locus of control.
Authoritarianism is a personality characteristic associated with anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism, and
political and economic conservatism, first identified in 1950 by Adorno and several co-authors of a
monumental study entitled The Authoritarian Personality. It is usually measured with a version of the F
scale, a questionnaire designed by Adorno and his colleagues to measure rigid adherence to conventional
middle-class values, a submissive and uncritical attitude towards authority figures, a dislike of
subjectivity and imagination, a belief in supernatural determinants of human fate, a preoccupation with
strong/weak, leader/follower relationships, a distrustful and misanthropic attitude towards people in
general, a tendency to project unconscious impulses on to others, and an exaggerated concern with other
sexual matters.
Field dependence is a personality trait, first identified by Witkin in 1949, associated with the way in
which people perceive themselves in relation to the environment. A field dependent person is strongly
influenced by the environment and tends to assimilate information non-selectively; a field independent
person, in contrast, is more reliant on internally generated cues and more discriminating in the use of
external information. The trait was originally investigated with the rod-and-frame test, in which the
respondent, seated in a darkened room, tries to adjust a luminous rod to the vertical position within a
tilted rectangular frame. Field dependent people are unduly influenced by the tilted frame, whereas field
independent people are more able to discount the frame and concentrate on internal gravitational cues in
judging the vertical. Researchers later developed more convenient measures of field dependence, notably
the paper-and-pencil embedded-figures test, which involves the identification of simple geometric figures
embedded in larger, more complex diagrams. Scores on these tests are predictive of behaviour across a
wide range of situations. Witkin and Goodenough (1977) concluded from the voluminous published
research that field independent people are especially adept at certain forms of logical thinking, tend to
gravitate towards occupations such as engineering, architecture, science teaching and experimental
psychology, and are often regarded by others as ambitious, inconsiderate and opportunistic. Field
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dependent people excel at interpersonal relations and are generally considered to be popular, friendly,
warm and sensitive; they are most usefully employed in such occupations as social work, elementary
school teaching and clinical psychology. Field dependence generally declines with age, and women are
more field dependent, on average, than men.
Locus of control is a personality trait first described by Phares (1957) and incorporated by Rotter
(1966) into his social learning theory. It indicates the degree to which people consider their lives to be
under their own personal control. It is measured on a continuum from internal to external by means of
questionnaires constructed by Rotter and others. People whose locus of control is internal tend to believe
that they are largely responsible for their own destinies, whereas those whose locus is external tend to
attribute their successes and failures to the influence of other people and uncontrollable chance events.
According to Rotter and his followers, a person’s locus of control affects the way that person will
perceive most situations and influences behaviour in predictable ways. Research has consistently shown
that people whose locus of control is internal, as compared to those whose locus is external, are more
likely to adopt health-promoting activities such as weight-watching, giving up smoking, visiting dentists
regularly, and taking exercise; they are relatively resistant to social influence and persuasion, and are
generally better adjusted and less anxious than those whose locus of control is external. Mental disorders
such as schizophrenia and depression are generally associated with external locus of control.
More ambitious multi-trait theories of personality are intended to account for human personality as a
whole rather than just one aspect of it. Their aim is to identify the constellation of fundamental traits that
constitute the structure of personality, and to explain differences between people according to their
location on these dimensions. Allport and Odbert (1936) found 4,500 words denoting personality traits in
a standard English dictionary, after eliminating synonyms. The first task of any multi-trait theory is to
identify the most important of these, taking into account the considerable overlap between them. A
statistical technique designed for this purpose, called factor analysis, reduces the measured correlations
between a large number of traits to a relatively small number of dimensions or factors. These primary
factors, which will generally be found to correlate with one another, can then be reduced to a still smaller
number of higher-order factors. This is analogous to reducing the multitude of distinguishable shades of
colour to the three dimensions of hue, saturation and brightness, which suffice to explain all the
differences. Influential multi-trait theories have been proposed by Raymond B. Cattell, who has
concentrated mainly on primary factors, and Hans J. Eysenck, who preferred higher-order factors, and a
consensus eventually emerged in favour of what came to be called the Big Five personality factors.
Cattell’s theory (Cattell and Kline 1977), which he outlined in the 1940s and elaborated over the
succeeding decades, is based on 171 traits that are intended to encompass the entire sphere of personality.
They represent the list of dictionary traits and the addition of a handful of technical terms. Factor analytic
studies of ratings and questionnaires reduced the list to sixteen primary factors or source traits, measured
by a standardized paper-and-pencil test called the Sixteen Personality Factor (16PF) questionnaire. They
include easily recognizable characteristics such as intelligence, excitability, submissiveness/dominance
and forthrightness/shrewdness, together with several others for which Cattell invented neologisms, such
as sizia, threcta and zeppia.
An important aspect of personality in Cattell’s theory, in addition to the temperament and ability
factors that determine how people behave, is the analysis of motivational factors determining why they
behave as they do. According to the theory, the ultimate sources of motivation, called ergs, are
biologically based and culturally universal factors such as food-seeking, mating, gregariousness and
acquisitiveness. The means by which they are satisfied are called sentiments; these are culturally variable
and include such activities as sport, religion and work. Five ergs and five sentiments are measured by the
Motivational Analysis Test (MAT). Factor analysis has revealed three basic dimensions of motivation,
corresponding roughly to Freud’s id, ego and superego. If a person is motivated to read a particular book,
for example, this may be because of impulsive desire (id interest), rational choice (ego interest) or a sense
of obligation (superego interest).
Eysenck’s (1967) theory, which he developed steadily from the 1940s until his death in 1997, is
simpler than Cattell’s, partly because it is based on higher-order factors. The three major factors or
dimensions of personality in this theory are extraversion (E), neuroticism (N) and psychoticism (P). They
are measured by standardized scales such as the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ). Traits
associated with the extraversion factor are sociability, friendliness, enjoyment of excitement,
talkativeness, impulsiveness, cheerfulness, activity and spontaneity. Traits associated with neuroticism
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include worrying, moodiness, tenseness, nervousness and anxiety. Psychoticism involves feelings of
persecution, irrational thinking, a liking for very strong physical sensations, inhumane cruelty and lack of
empathy. According to Eysenck’s theory, the location of a person on these three independent factors
explains a great deal about that person’s everyday behaviour. The theory also accounts for psychological
disorders. Low E, high N and low P, for example, is suggestive of obsessional neurosis; high E, high N
and low P points to hysteria; low E, low N and high P is characteristic of schizophrenia; and so on. Most
people, of course, fall somewhere between the extremes on all three scales. Eysenck believed the three
factors to be biologically based and largely hereditary, and he has devoted a great deal of attention to their
possible locations in the brain and central nervous system.
A consensus emerged towards the end of the 1980s that five dimensions or factors are required to
capture all aspects of personality. The Big Five, as they came to be called, are usually labelled
agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience or intellect
(Goldberg, 1993). In this approach, agreeableness is characterized by traits such as kindness, generosity,
warmth, unselfishness and trust; conscientiousness by organization, thoroughness, reliability and
practicality; and openness to experience or intellect by imagination, curiosity and creativity. Extraversion
and neuroticism are defined as in Eysenck’s theory, and psychoticism is not regarded as a dimension of
normal personality. The Big Five personality factors are usually measured by a standardized scale called
the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), developed by Costa and McCrae in 1992.
The most important controversy in the field of personality, initiated by Mischel (1968), centres on the
issue of consistency. Mischel summarized an impressive array of evidence that seemed to cast doubt on
one of the underlying assumptions of all personality theories – that people display more or less stable
patterns of behaviour across situations. He drew particular attention to the low correlations between
personality test scores and behaviour, and concluded that behaviour can be more reliably predicted from
past behaviour than from personality test scores. This suggestion implies that behaviour is merely
predictive of itself, and that theories of personality are futile, at least for predicting behaviour. Mischel
recommended that personality research should be abandoned in favour of the investigation of situational
factors that influence behaviour.
The situationist (or contextualist) critique of personality generated a considerable amount of debate
and research, much of it appearing to refute Mischel’s arguments and evidence. The debate is unresolved,
but the views of most authorities since the mid-1970s have tended towards interactionism. According to
this view, human behaviour is dependent partly on internal personality factors, partly on external
situational factors, and partly on interactions (in the statistical sense) between personality and situational
factors.
Andrew M. Colman
University of Leicester

References
Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J. and Sanford, R. N. (1950) The Authoritarian Personality,
New York.
Allport, G. W. (1937) Personality: A Psychological Interpretation, New York.
Cattell, R. B. and Kline, P. (1977) The Scientific Analysis of Personality and Motivation, London.
Eysenck, H. J. (1967) The Biological Basis of Personality, Springfield, IL.
Goldberg, L. R. (1993) ‘The structure of phenotypic personality traits’, American Psychologist, 48.
Mischel, W. (1968) Personality and Assessment, New York.
Phares, E. J. (1957) ‘Expectancy changes in skill and chance situations’, Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology 54.
Rotter, J. B. (1966) ‘Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement’,
Psychological Monographs 80 (609).
Witkin, H. A. and Goodenough, D. R. (1977) ‘Field dependence and interpersonal behavior’, Psychological
Bulletin 84.

Further reading
Engler, B. (2003) Personality Theories: An Introduction, 6th edn, Boston, MA.
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Hall, C. S., Lindzey, G. and Campbell, J. B. (1998) Theories of Personality, 4th edn, New York.
Pervin, L. A. (2003) The Science of Personality, 2nd edn, New York.
See also: personal construct theory; personality assessment.